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One of the neat things about keeping a blog is the feedback one sometimes receives. Particularly fun are those times when I have written about a particular person and gotten a comment or email from the subject of my post. Sometimes those responses come right away, while other times many months might pass before the response arrives, the sender perhaps not seeing the post until much later.

For example, earlier this week I received some nice feedback from Kyle Siler on that post from last month in which I discussed his study “Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker” (appearing in The Journal of Gambling Studies). Siler responded both to my summary of his study as well as to observations made by poker pro Andy Bloch there in the comments section. For those who were following that discussion, you might check that out.

Of course, sometimes comments or responses come much later. In July 2008, I had just gotten home after a summer of reporting on the World Series of Poker. While in Vegas I had visited the Gamblers Bookshop and picked up some old magazines, including some issues of Gambling Times.

I ended up writing a post titled “Reporting on the 1979 WSOP” in which I shared a lot from one particular article in that magazine chronicling the ’79 Series, one written by John Hill. I got a kick out of comparing how the WSOP was covered in 2008 and how it was covered some three decades earlier.

Anyhow, it was about six months later that John Hill himself came around and left a comment on that post. “Glad to see a reprise of my coverage,” he began, noting that “those were heady days of the game and provided grist for many a mill.” He shared a few more memories of those days in his comment — take a look if you’re curious.

I also had some feedback just recently to another post I had written some time ago. In August 2008, I spent a little time going through the first 40 years’ worth of Rolling Stone magazine (a task made easier by my having gotten them on DVDs), searching for references to poker. I thought it would be interesting to see how poker had been covered — or not covered — in this non-poker, mainstream publication.

I ended up writing two posts, focusing in particular on a few articles that had appeared along the way. Here are those posts: “Poker & Pop Culture: Rolling Stone (1967-2007) (1 of 2)” and “Poker & Pop Culture: Rolling Stone (1967-2007) (2 of 2).”

In the second of those posts, I gave some attention to a particular article that appeared in 1981 amid a series of pieces about college life. Actually it was two articles — companion pieces that dealt with students and professors interacting in social settings: “On Drinking with Professors” by Grif Fariello and “On Drinking with Students” by William Kittredge.

Both of the writers — the student (Fariello) and teacher (Kittredge) — make reference to poker games, and finding all of that very interesting I summarized it in great detail in my post, noting both how the students were routinely beating the profs and also what the game seemed to signify to each.

Anyhow, just last week I received a nice email from Grif Fariello offering some background on how the articles were put together. I asked him if it would be okay to share some of what he told me here on the blog, and he said it would be fine.

“I should fill you in on that piece I wrote for Rolling Stone,” he began. Apparently William Kittredge (“Bill”) had gotten a last-minute, panicky request from the editor at Rolling Stone. “They’d come up short for the next issue and could Bill fill in with X amount of words in 24 hours,” came the appeal. The editor had come up with the student-teacher “gimmick,” and Kittredge asked Fariello, then a grad student in the writing program, if he could write the student half. “I said sure,” responded Fariello.

“We blasted the stuff out overnight,” Fariello told me. “Some of the anecdotes in my half are true, but the poker aspect is not.” Indeed, it turns out that while the articles are somewhat based in reality, there are several embellishments in there, some likely resulting from the necessity of the quick turn-around. Fariello said that while he’d “shared plenty of drinks with Bill… I’ve never played poker with him or any other Prof. If I had I would’ve lost my shirt. I’m a lousy poker player and never really enjoyed playing cards much beyond cribbage and not even that anymore.”

The fact is, the articles weren’t really meant to be taken as on-the-scene, documentary-like reports (as I did in my post). “Both articles were intended as amusing blather in the heroic mode, quick filler, not reportage,” explained Fariello. He added a few more comments about how other details of the interactions between the students and teachers were further enhanced for added drama.

I thought it very interesting to learn that the poker angle had been introduced into the articles as a way of helping flesh out the student-teacher dynamic a bit more, even though no poker had actually been played. Kind of says something about the symbolic value of the game, really, as a way to bring together different groups and have them interact in ways they might not otherwise.

As I said, I asked Fariello if it would be okay to share his postscript here, as I know some readers might remember those Rolling Stone posts and thus might find it as interesting as I did. Big thanks to him for letting me do so, as well as to John Hill and Kyle Siler for their feedback, too.

For another example of a story I thought once to be true but later found out otherwise, check out my Betfair article from today, “The Nuts, the Wheel, and the Hammer.” And, as always, feedback is welcome!

Have a good weekend, all.

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I occasionally talk here about how impatient I sometimes get with poker-related analogies. For instance, about a year ago I referred to the Poker Shrink noting how he wasn’t “a big fan of the ‘Poker is like Life’ books and articles” because, in his view, most of them end up being “too general to carry any more wisdom than a dribble glass.” I agreed with the Shrink in saying I also didn’t care much for these analogies — most particularly when they end up making one’s meaning more vague rather than helping clarify what it is one is trying to express.

In other words, I ain’t too keen on someone proclaiming “Poker is like life” and leaving it at that, though I do often appreciate the many ways poker presents us with situations that resemble those we face elsewhere, and thus occasionally provides interesting ways to talk about and assess those non-poker situations. And yeah, I, too, will indulge in such making comparisons now and again, as it is both fun and occasionally even useful.

That said, one has to be careful not to introduce unwanted vagueness when making such comparisons. Another danger one faces when choosing to employ poker-related metaphors is to fall into stale, overused phrases and clichés — also not recommended if the goal is to engage an audience.

The abundance of poker terms and phrases in everyday English is testament to the game’s popularity and significance. But this abundance also means many of these terms and phrases have become pretty well worn by now. People everywhere are constantly bluffing each other. Or upping the ante. Or noting when the chips are down. Or passing the buck. Or trying their hand at something. Or singing that he can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my poker face. Or warning you about that guy being a wild card, with an ace in the hole. Or up his sleeve. Or simply being an ace.

I’m reminded of George Orwell’s still relevant 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” in which he laments the decline of the language in various contexts, but most especially in political speech and writing. Among his many warnings listed there, Orwell advises readers to avoid “dying metaphors” if at all possible. In his list of examples Orwell does include one poker-related one — “playing into the hands of” — and I’d imagine he’d list most of those appearing in the previous paragraph, too, as often introducing an unwanted “loss of vividness” in one’s language.

Last week Tiffany Michelle appeared on Fox News to chat with Neil Cavuto, ostensibly to discuss the current status of President Obama’s efforts to introduce health care reform and all of the legislative tangling — and political fallout — that has occurred in connection to those efforts thus far. Why Michelle? Well, because she’s “a professional black jack and poker player” — i.e., a gambler — and someone thought it would be a good idea for a person who understands risks and rewards to comment.

Bill Rini wrote a bit about the segment last week in a post that also has the embedded video. Then he came back and transcribed the whole sucker. As Rini points out, the conversation between Cavuto and Michelle — coming in at just under five minutes — is more than a little cringe-worthy, primarily because of the not terribly successful attempt to describe everything in terms of poker or gambling metaphors.

It appears that Cavuto (and Fox) mainly wanted to say that Obama has “a bad hand” here and should fold. And perhaps — as Cavuto hastily adds at the end — also to charge that the President isn’t playing with his own money, but with the taxpayers’. So they brought Michelle on to help communicate that message, but Cavuto’s questions were so imprecise those (essentially banal) observations barely came through, if at all.

If you’re curious, check out Rini’s transcript and/or watch the video. I actually wouldn’t fault Michelle too much here — she does pretty well, I think, to try to respond to Cavuto’s garbled clichés, and in fact probably saves the whole segment from becoming utterly inscrutable.

The hosts of The Poker Beat discussed the segment a bit on their show last week, and there tourney reporter B.J. Nemeth did a good job summarizing why it failed — and why I am sometimes impatient with poker-related metaphors that tend to obscure more than clarify. “The whole point of an analogy is to try and make something easier to understand,” said Nemeth, “and I think what they did is took something the [viewers] had some grasp of and made it incomprehensible.”

Then again, as Orwell notes, what Nemeth is describing is often what happens when language is employed for political purposes. Writing in the wake of the second World War, Orwell notes how “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Perhaps the stakes were a bit higher then (to use a dying metaphor). But Orwell’s desire for us to view “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought” is still worth reiterating.

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Ended up playing some more Rush Poker over the weekend on Full Tilt and enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m just one-tabling the sucker, sticking with the pot-limit Omaha games (both six-handed and full ring).

Looking at my Poker Tracker stats, it appears I’m playing almost exactly 150 hands per hour. That compares to about 45-50 hands per hour at a regular PLO table. And while I’m not going to get into win rates too specifically, let’s just say there’s been a similarly significant jump there, too, when compared to the regular ring games. (Insert smiley face here.)

As others have noted, the game is such that it is generally difficult to “get a read” on opponents in the way one might do in a regular ring game. In particular, since with each new hand players have been reassembled around a new table, there is no way of knowing what happened with everyone else just prior to the current hand being dealt. Thus, I don’t know if the guy coming out raising pot from UTG just suffered a horrendous beat and is now tilting, or if he’s a tight player who almost never raises from early position without aces, double-suited.

However, it is not impossible to get reads on players, especially when the pool is small enough that you see the same names coming back again and again. When I’ve been playing the PLO games, the player pool has been as big as 170 or so, and as small as 65, with usually about 20% of the players multi-tabling — that is, playing two, three, or four tables. (I know the hold’em player pools have generally been much larger.) Thus, I have had sessions where I’ve encountered players several times and thus eventually come to develop some ideas about them from having seen them play previous hands. Gotta pay attention, though.

My sense is the software is assigning the various seat positions fairly enough, even though there have been times when it seems like I’m in the blinds more often than I should be. Again, looking at Poker Tracker, it appears I am, in fact, moving around the table just fine, occupying each of the positions roughly the same percentage of the time I would be in the regular ring game.

There’s one other aspect of the game that took a while for me to figure out. If you’ve played Rush Poker you know that once you fold a hand you are immediately moved from the table and start a new hand, meaning you don’t get to see the previous hand play out among the players still involved. However, the completed hand does make it into your personal hand histories, so if you open up that “Last Hand” window it isn’t too hard to go back and see how the story ended.

Speaking of going back and examining unfinished stories, this weekend I also became interested in this thread over on Two Plus Two regarding the UltimateBet cheating scandal and its aftermath, the one titled “How goes Sebok’s hunt for the real (UB) killers?” Some interesting info starting to pop up in that one, including the contributions of Haley Hintze regarding both ownership issues and, more recently, the hand histories Barry Greenstein received from UB.

A month ago I shared the story of how — after a full year of emails — I finally received some of my hand histories from UltimateBet. I say “some” because in the end I was only sent roughly two-thirds of the hands I actually played on the site (along with a number of hands in which I was sitting out). As I mentioned then, I stuck to the small stakes, meaning I did not run up against any of the cheating accounts in the hands I played on the site (as far as I know).

Anyhow, Haley has written further about Greenstein’s hand histories on her blog, noting in particular a couple of curious plays made by the cheating account when up against the Bear. You can look at Greenstein’s hand histories, too, if you want, as they’ve been posted over on PokerRoad.

By the way, the scattered, difficult-to-parse text files Greenstein received are in the same user-unfriendly format in which my HHs were sent to me. One difference, though — Haley points out how some of the hands from particular sessions appear to be missing from Greenstein’s histories (i.e., there are some gaps in the numbering sequences). I noticed no such gaps in any of my sessions, although as I said before, I had a couple of sessions for which the hand histories were not sent to me.

Like I say, if you’re interested in that story, check out Haley’s most recent blog post as well as the Two Plus Two thread for more.

Meanwhile, let me remind you that the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker series begins this afternoon on PokerStars with the first event, a no-limit hold’em freeroll. (For more on that, see here.) I’m planning to be there, although I doubt I’m gonna try to blog and/or tweet much as I play. NLHE ain’t my usual game, so I might need my whole jingle brain to focus on the tourney. Good luck to you, if yr playin’ too.

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Noticed an item in yesterday’s USA Today about online poker, a reference to a newly-published study about online poker called “Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker” by Kyle Siler, a doctoral student in sociology at Cornell University.

As usually happens with these articles that try to summarize a discipline-specific study for a wide audience, the USA Today piece boils Siler’s article down to one simple, easy-to-digest claim, essentially announcing that it shows “Poker wins often lead to bigger losses.” In other words, the USA Today article makes it sounds as though Siler’s exhaustive study of a large sample of online poker hands proves that players who win a little tend to lose it back and then some — confirming, in a way, the fears of those who object to poker and/or gambling as an inevitable road to ruin, regardless of one’s short-term successes.

The USA Today article is accompanied by a picture of 2009 World Series of Poker champion Joe Cada, who does not actually figure in the piece. I suppose there could be some implication here being advanced about the possibility of Cada’s not holding onto his winnings, but I think it more likely this was the first available poker-related photo that came up following a quick search.

I was curious to read the study, especially because the way it was presented in the USA Today article seemed more than a little sketchy. Took a little bit of work to get a look at it, but I did manage get a copy and have now read it through.

Siler speaks knowledgeably of poker and the online game, and as far as I can tell seems to be operating within accepted expectations for sociological research and argumentation. He also shows an understanding of economic theory and applies some of those ideas when appropriate. Siler additionally brings in many references to “poker literature” — both to strategy texts and to narratives — which help ground the study within conversations about theory and practice with which we poker players who have read those books are versed. Those references to people like Sklansky, Caro, Harrington, Brunson, and others also make the article more fun for poker players to read than probably would be the case with most dry, academic treatises.

All in all, I think Siler’s article is smart and interesting, and while its findings mostly confirm ideas we already had about what strategies are most successful his study is nonetheless useful for its having found support for those ideas in the data. I also think it is obvious that the USA Today writer probably only skimmed the study, coming away with a vague, uncertain understanding of its findings.

Here, let me take a shot at summarizing this sucker a little more carefully…

“Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker” by Kyle Siler appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies. Using Poker Tracker, Siler examines roughly 26.9 million hands of online poker played over a five-month period at different stakes in order to try to determine “which strategies are conducive to winning at these different levels,” and therefore perhaps draw some conclusions about the “social and psychological challenges” the game presents. The game on which Siler focuses is short-handed (6-max.) no-limit hold’em, and the hands he’s looking at come from games played at NL50, NL200, and NL1000. In all, he was able to gather and analyze stats on around 295,000 different players.

After crunching the numbers with Poker Tracker, Siler reaches a few conclusions which he does a good job explaining, also using charts and graphs to help him further illustrate what he has found. Those conclusions include his having discovered that

“tight and aggressive strategies have the best return across all levels”;

one finds “an increased proportion of aggressive players as one moves up stakes,” where also “the number of passive players decreases”;

there is an “overrepresentation of loose and aggressive players” among the biggest winners and the biggest losers at all stakes;

“None of the biggest winners at any of the levels were even close to being in the top hundred win rates,” having made their money via higher volume (the “grinders”);

“a high win percentage (i.e. the percentage of total hands won by a player) is negatively correlated with win rate.”

It is this last item that I think caused the USA Today writer to stumble a bit. The point there is that in no-limit hold’em winning a lot of pots doesn’t mean one wins a lot of money, and, in fact, when one looks at millions of hands like Siler did, one discovers that the big winners tend to win fewer (though bigger) pots relative to the rest of the player pool. That correlates with the first finding, namely, that the tight-aggressive strategy has the best return.

The USA Today writer took that point and mangled it into a declaration that “players who played a lot of hands and often won ended up losing more money than others.” He then quotes from Siler’s study in a way that makes it sound like Siler is agreeing with that somewhat vague claim, but he’s misrepresented Siler’s findings.

Siler does conclude the study with some thoughts about how moving up in stakes presents players with new challenges, and does a nifty job relating how the stress of adapting one’s style — necessary to succeeding at the higher levels — presents especially difficult “social and psychological challenges” to poker players. He ends with the point that “the biggest opponent for many players is themselves,” an idea familiar to any poker player who has struggled to improve his or her game.

Like I say, a smart study that I recommend if you can somehow get access to a copy. And I’m sorry to see it somewhat misrepresented in USA Today the way it was — that is, as seeming uncritically to confirm fears about poker as just another unhealthy avenue to degeneracy and self-destruction — and thereby soliciting further misinformed, unrelated comments like “this is the reason why the house always win[s]” and “that is why they call it gambling.”

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We are almost there. The last day of the year. How are things stacking up for you, in terms of your win/loss total for 2009? Don’t do anything silly today to try and manipulate it into something you like better.

Me? I might play a little today, but I have a lot of other writing to do, including finishing this here recap. Following Part 1 (Jan.-Apr.) and Part 2 (May-Aug.), here’s the rest of the story:

September

In UIGEA news, a lawsuit brought by the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (iMEGA) that challenged the law’s constitutionality was dismissed. This story was strangely spun by many (in particular, iMEGA) as good news because in rejecting the case the 3rd Circuit District Court made reference to the fact that individual states get to say what is and what is not unlawful internet gambling.

Fact was, this distinction had been noted in the UIGEA all along (i.e., this new case didn’t really change anything on that front), something I pointed out in “iMEGA Suit Claiming Unconstitutionality of UIGEA Dismissed.”

During the first part of September I was occupied with helping cover PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), and so there were a few posts this month reporting various happenings there. In the last one of those posts, I was inspired to comment on the repeat successes of guys like Daniel “djk123” Kelly, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, and Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko in “PokerStars WCOOP Concludes: It’s a Skill Game, Jo.”

Was watching the U.S. Open in there, too, and in “Matching Up Poker and Tennis” I attempt to draw an analogy that addresses the old luck-vs.-skill debate in poker. “The Poker Hall of Fame: Will Anyone Be Worthy?” notes how the new voting procedure appeared to guarantee that either no one or just one person would get in this year. And “When Winners Lose, and Losers Win” relates the story of that wild hand at EPT Barcelona between Tobias Reinkemeier and Roland de Wolfe in which de Wolfe mucked a winner.

As far as my own play was going, I was running good in August and early September, partly evidenced by “Shovels, Clovers, Valentines, and Squares” in which I tell about flopping a straight flush. Then hit a bad patch, some details of which I shared in “I Get Up, I Get Down.” I also see that I began and ended the month with a couple of posts about stack sizes in PLO: “Topping Off” and “Don’t Want No Short People ’Round Here?”

September also saw the Kahnawake Gaming Commission issue its so-called “final decision” on the UB insider cheating scandal, which I talked some about in “Final Decision on UltimateBet: None of My Business.” And, as you’ll recall, soon after came “The Sebok Surprise” in which the well-liked pro signed on with the beleaguered site.

October

The month began with the conclusion of the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event, in which Barry Shulman enjoyed a couple of fortunate hands against Daniel Negreanu heads up to take it down. Talk about that some in “End of Story: 2009 WSOPE Main Event Concludes.”

Then our attention gradually turned toward Vegas and the upcoming conclusion of the WSOP Main Event. On October 7 I noted there was just “One Month Left to Hype the November Nine.” I think Harrah’s, ESPN, et al. ended up doing okay during those next few weeks to get us all (and others) interested in the sucker come November. Case in point, a week later in “That’s the Way We Do It” I admit how I was starting really to get into the ESPN broadcasts of the Main Event. And near the end of October I was marveling with everyone else at that hand in which Phil Ivey mistakenly mucked his flush, giving Jordan Smith an undeserved pot in “Not Exactly Ivey League.”

These posts from October all have self-explanatory titles, I think: “PokerStars Million Dollar Challenge Debuts,” “The Poker Hall of Fame: Sexton Selected,” and “Kentucky Still Hoping to Be Master of Your Domains.” Well, maybe I should explain that last one. Had to do with the still-ongoing appeal of the appeal, now being considered by Kentucky’s Supreme Court, in that case regarding the commonwealth’s desire to block or seize domains hosting online gambling sites.

Then there are some posts in there with titles that definitely need explainin’. “Playing As If Your Life Depended On It” made references to both Tommy Angelo and The Seventh Seal. “Up, Up, and Away!” concerns our friend “balloon boy” (remember him?). And “Call and Response” does a little theorizin’ about the significance of blogs, Twitter, and how we use this here interweb to relate to each other.

Early in the month I made it to the movies to see a decent comedy called The Invention of Lying. I reviewed that one over on Film Chaw, then wrote about it here, too, in “First, the Invention of Lying; then, the Invention of Poker.” That post caused me to evoke James McManus’ new book (which I was reading at the time), Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker. I’d eventually review it here in “A Good Read: McManus Tells the Story of Poker.” Soon I’d additionally get the chance to review Cowboys Full more formally over on the Betfair site, where I’d also interview McManus.

November

First half of November was all about the WSOP Main Event final table. In “Post-Production is 20/20” I talked some more about Ivey’s mistake versus Jordan Smith, including sharing Barry Greenstein’s thoughts on the matter. Then in “Kopp Busted!” I talked about seeing ESPN’s coverage of another crazy hand, the one in which Billy Kopp lost it all to Darvin Moon with just a dozen players left.

Then we finally got there. In “2009 November Nine Just Hours Away… Time for Special Tactics!” I talked a bit about Phil Hellmuth saying he’d coached Jeff Shulman to employ a “special tactic” to “shock the world.” Then I gave an overview of the nine players at the final table in “2009 WSOP Main Event Final Table: Welcome Back, November Nine.”

Discussed that bizarro Hand No. 90 in which Darvin Moon made the big bluff then folded for next-to-nothing to Steve Begleiter in “Moon Begs the Question… WTF?” Wrote about the heads-up match a bit in “Comeback Kid Cada 2009 WSOP Main Event Champ,” then a few days later offered “Kudos to Cada: WSOP Champ on Letterman.” A final November Nine post, “Looking Back: 2009 WSOP November Nine on ESPN,” includes a list of the 32 (of 364) final table hands that made it into the two-and-a-half hour long ESPN broadcast.

You’ll recall it was just a few days later we learned “Pollack Moves On, WSOP Commish Seat Open.” Harrah’s still hasn’t filled that seat, and toward the end of the month I asked “Does the WSOP Need a Commish?”

Let’s see… the weird-ass juxtaposition of the month award goes to the post “The Sklansky Minute and John Cage’s Indeterminacy.” (See that one for yourself, if yr curious.) And “$1,356,946.50” relates how I happened to have been railing Isidur1 and Patrik Antonius when I saw them play the biggest pot in online poker history.

As the month concluded, we American online poker players were all fretting about the upcoming December 1 deadline for enforcement of the UIGEA. I wrote “The Door is Closing: Hoping for UIGEA Delay,” then the next day (Thanksgiving) got to say “Thankful, I Am” as we’d heard that indeed there’d be a six-month postponement of the deadline.

December

Month began with that House hearing on online gambling, discussed in “Talking Online Poker: House Hearing Today.” Then everybody put the subject on hold. ’Cos, you know, there was shopping to do. Oh, and that health care thing.

Read a couple more poker books near year’s end, both autobiographies. I’d review Doyle Brunson’s The Godfather of Poker over at Betfair, but also wrote a piece here — “Doyle Brunson’s Confessions” — in which I talked about how the book reminded me more than once of St. Augustine’s autobiography. (Not saying Doyle’s a saint, haha!) I also wrote here a “Poker Book Review: Victoria Coren’s For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker” — a funny, even “literary” book I’d think should appeal to any poker player who likes good storytelling.

Opined a bit on Scott Huff and Joe Sebok’s new Fox Sports show in “Poker2Nite Brings Poker to the World.” The post “Speaking of Poker: What You Can and Cannot Say, Part II” is also about their show, revisiting an old topic regarding the conflict between online poker sponsorships and television.

Mid-month saw the “2010 WSOP Schedule Announced,” inspiring a bit of photshopping (see below). In much less significant news, I finally got response to my repeated requests to UltimateBet which I related in “The Rest of the Story (UB Hand Histories).”

Of course, the big poker story in December was the ongoing Isildur1 saga, and I wrote about it a few times here.

“Out of This World: The Isildur1 Saga Continues” discusses Patrik Antonius’s interview with Phil Gordon about the mystery man while also pointing to some other stories then swirling about. In “Loving Life, Defying Death” I talked about railing Isildur1 a bit while also referring back to Doyle Brunson’s book (and the weird, repeated joke of some railbirds prematurely announcing Texas Dolly’s death). “Digging for Gold (Mining Isildur1)” took up the new controversy regarding the CardRunners guys’ collecting info about the sneaky Swede. Then came PokerNews’ interview with Isildur1 in which revealed he planned to pursue a “formal complaint.” I suggested “Grab Your Popcorn (Isildur1 v. Full Tilt).”

So that’s what’s been happenin’ here. No telling at the moment what 2010 will be like for yr humble gumshoe, but I imagine continuing to scribble away here will most definitely be part of the plan.

Big thanks again to everyone for coming around here and for all of the nice feedback. Be sure and make contact again in 2010. Have a safe and happy new year, all!

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